Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Now For The Manacle Marks

I’ve just been told that I am now a Permanent Resident in Australia. The letter came from the Department of Immigration this week. I’ve been on probation, as it were, for the last 18 months or so. I can’t pretend that it’s been a worry for us, though the consequences of a rejection would have been pretty horrendous. So now I can, in due course apply for citizenship and have the hereditary manacle marks put on my legs. (Sorry, that comes from a joke that New Zealanders tell – how can you tell an Aussie from a Kiwi?)

As I’ve noted before, it’s easy to forget that we’re living in a foreign country. This week reminded me that, until now, I could have been asked to leave at any time. Curiously, for the first time, I’ve also been racially abused. At the end of a long and, from both sides, fruitless phone call about the Government selling its stake in the Snowy Mountain hydro scheme, I was told I was a Pommie bastard and could piss off.

Now I don’t for a minute this ranks high in terms of racial abuse (though I am having counselling, obviously) but it does make you think. I didn’t get a chance to tell him I wasn’t a Pom because he put the phone down, but the point was I was being abused because of something over which I had no control, over something he thought I was. What must it be like to put up with that every day because of the colour of your skin? To add insult to injury, the Government pulled out of the sale the next day, citing strong public sentiment. I’ll say.

And for the record, I will be supporting Australia against England in the first rugby union test this Sunday, though what that proves in this context, I’m not sure, given that I am, of course, Welsh.